AU7: Tempus Dominus, Invictus
by Lilac Reverie
Summary: Alternating Universes FINALE. How the Doctor regains his ability to regenerate, and what happens to Rose's twin. Ten/RoseB and several surprise guest stars.
1. Intro and Prologue

_**Author's Note:** This is the seventh and final entry in my series _Alternating Universes_. As always, new readers are strongly encouraged to begin at the beginning, with _Sea Change. _I promise, this finale will be much better than the one to JMRD: longer, happier, and more fulfilling and uplifting._

_I'm still not comfortable writing Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor, so in this one, my "future" Doctor is still some number after that; I'm calling him the Twelfth. (And if the "real" Twelve, when he finally appears – or any subsequent BBC Doctor – is anything like my vision, I will simply smile mysteriously.) I am continuing with the descriptions I began in _Looking Glass Redux_ (although that story is not properly part of this mini-canon), as well as the glimpses of him seen previously in other stories. (Don't worry, all will be clear in a chapter or two.)_

_== UPDATE, December 2013: Well, well, well. I may not have been too far off in my descriptions, after all - Peter Capaldi has been announced as the 12th Doctor, and from what I've seen... short curly hair (although I made it dark), shocking blue eyes, vaguely Gallic complexion and features... I think I'll just take my bows here. ;) ==_

_I would like to thank my loyal readers for going the distance with me; your comments and reviews have often made my day (week, month) and kept me going on many occasions. Especially, I'd like to thank my good friend Rodney Dobson, who (among other things) inadvertently gave me the key to this fic in an off-hand question. I've long known where I wanted to take Ten and RoseB, but couldn't quite figure out how to get them there until he asked. (Rodney, I think you've just been elevated to a lower-level muse, just beneath Ten and Rose themselves.) My ultimate solution may not surprise many of you, after all the hints I've given, but I hope how I get there is still entertaining._

_Final introductory note: my title this time is in Latin. I'll save you the trouble of putting it through Google Translate: it means _**Time Lord, Unconquered.**

_**Disclaimer**_**: **_as much as I might wish otherwise, Doctor Who still belongs to the BBC._

* * *

**Intro**

There were hearts beating...  
..one in four parts, brave and true, strong and kind...  
...one in two parts, filled with love for only him...  
...and one single susurrating sigh, pumping them across the universe...

There was music...  
..the tiny melody of a child's music box, chiming out a mother's love...  
...a timeless paean of endless love, sung over a hero's empty grave...  
...and the mournful tolling of cloister bells, a warning of catastrophe...

There were keys...  
..one to a box, bigger on the inside...  
...one to his love, in a tiny gold locket that never left his neck...  
...and one to a mystery that threatened them all...

There were echoes...  
..of a past and future self...  
...of reverberating Time...  
...and a single, supreme act of sacrifice...

And there was a name...  
..and a word...  
...and a promise...  
...and the three were one...

* * *

**Prologue**

He was in Hell.

Time had frozen solid, a single solitary instant stretched to infinity. Even the ordinary photons of light streaking through the air were immobilized, standing utterly still at the precise point in space they had been when Time simply stopped. Nothing moved.

Except his mind.

The Doctor was trapped inside his own skull. Somehow, by some miracle, the innermost portion of his Time Lord brain continued to work, desperately holding on to the last visual image of the world outside his head and chewing frantically, futilely over it. Even that image was beginning to fade around the edges, his field of remembered vision narrowing to only the TARDIS console before him, slightly below his line of sight, as he had been grinning maniacally over the display screen at Rose standing opposite and holding on to her side of the console with practiced ease as they began a routine jump through time.

The instant the Time Rotor had engaged, the world had simply stopped.

For what felt like hours, no movement whatsoever, no sensation, no sight or sound reached his mind through any of his billions of neural connections. Then, finally, a synapse in his visual cortex, leading from his own eyeballs, fired – and then, after another eternity, another, and another, and another, each one coming slightly faster, until - after almost a day - they were firing fast enough for him to begin putting together the outside picture again. Nothing had changed, nothing had moved a single micrometer – except the slight shifting position of those photons.

At last, he realized Time was no longer frozen completely, but moving at such a cosmic snail's pace that it would take hours, subjectively, for a photon to reach his eyes from hers, still seeming to smile at him from across the console.

And at last, he put it all together.

He was mentally living through their jump in real time, as the TARDIS fled through its wormhole in the Void. As soon as they reached their destination, all would return to normal. No problem.

Wait, what was he _thinking_? How long _was_ their programmed jump?

The answer finally floated up from the somewhat-affected synapses in his short-term memory.

_Two thousand years._

He started screaming.


	2. Twelfth Doctor: Autosuggestion

**Twelfth Doctor: Autosuggestion**

The Doctor decided he'd be a lot happier if River's last, frustrated words – flung over her shoulder at him just before she'd slammed her fingers down on the Time Jumper on her wrist to take her stars-only-knew where and when, just away from him – if those words didn't keep ringing in his ears.

"Why can't you let me in? After everything we've been through, why can't you let go and trust me? Why do you always, _always_ keep holding me at arm's length?"

Again and again they mocked him, those words, echoing down through every one of his eleven previous lives, until they came to an abrupt halt at the emotional dam of his tenth regen, cut short and overridden by the greater echo that never died. _Rose..._

He decided then that he wanted to test himself, to prove that he could endure the memories again after having run from them for his entire eleventh life – and longer. Or maybe just to prove that the memories weren't the problem - that in fact there _wasn't_ a problem, he'd just returned to his normal, pre-Rose, non-interfering, non-emotionally-involved-with-companions mode of operations.

Whatever. He wasn't quite up to returning to Larrik Hollow on Serenity; that planet would never again have the power to bestow its titular condition on his soul - nor was he yet ready to deal with the rest of his family there and their inevitable (albeit loving) questions. But there were a few other places he could go. The bit of TARDIS coral that the older Joshua had given him when they returned from Pacifica in the parallel universe all those years ago, already attuned to that universe's frequencies, had slowly grown and grafted itself into its niche within its Mama, his own coral. He hadn't ever subjected it to the full brunt of Donna's force-growing suggestion, always figuring in the back of his mind that by the time he was finally ready to return, it would be, too. And it was. After all, he didn't need to grow a whole new TARDIS, just a big enough chunk to harvest power while within that universe and feed it to the rest, as well as to sense the correct frequencies for finding it through the Medusa Cascade.

So he'd made the trip through the mind-bending color shift of the Cascade, taking a few minutes to reflect on his former twin's "birth" there from the metacrisis in the Dalek Crucible all those (subjective) years ago. And that gave him the logical next destination once he'd reached the other side. He was going to infiltrate Corin's wedding to Rose, back before she herself was twinned.

So he skipped to the parallel Earth and put out his antennae, sampling the infonet to discover the current date and recalibrate the TARDIS's internal timers. Then, searching through his massive wardrobe, he discovered that none of the five different tuxedos on board fit his current body to his picky satisfaction, so he decided to go shopping for a new one.

But the TARDIS wouldn't open the door for him. *_You should get one from the right time period, so you blend in better.* _Shooting an annoyed glare at the Time Rotor – sometimes the ship's enhanced verbal abilities just turned her into a nag – he stalked back up the ramp.

_*Fine. Take me to London, that morning.*_ It wasn't worth arguing over.

At least she did manage to put him down in a good spot, right next to Barron's, an upscale department store. He found the Men's Formalwear department on the top floor and persuaded the head sales clerk to abandon the indecisive customer he had been fitting to outfit him with a new Brioni, in sleek-but-understated elegant black. The unadorned white silk shirt and plain bow tie were a concession to his presumed disguise as a waiter; otherwise, his current incarnation's fashion sense would have led him to a much different choice. Oh, well, sacrifices must be made. Occasionally.

Perforce skipping ahead two days to allow for the final tiny tailoring tucks and hemming the pants legs, he made a mental note to remember the store if he decided to go shopping again in this lifetime, then _whooshed_ away to the forest behind the Tyler mansion on the morning in question. He snuck carefully through the trees and up to the delivery entrance, insinuating himself into the group of formally-dressed wait staff hired for the day. They were allowed as a group to witness the wedding from one distant side of the house. As he watched his twin walk by with Jake and Pete, the Doctor thought for a moment Corin had sensed his presence – but then he saw the man was completely bemused by the sight of his intended coming to meet him under the canopy.

So was he.

The Doctor had been to a fair few weddings in his centuries, many of them his own (voluntary or not), and had seem the entire gamut from disasters to brilliant. This one was undoubtedly in the latter category, albeit quietly and intimately so. He caught the echoes of many old Gallifreyan customs in the words and symbols, and realized immediately what none of the humans ever knew: it was – in the Gallifreyan tradition – celebration of the couple's already-formed Life Bond, as well as the human legal and emotional sacrament. After Rose had been twinned (exactly five years to the day in her personal future) and they'd formed their own Life Bond, he'd never opened this memory of hers, nor any of her life with Corin. But he knew that on this day, in this hour, she had given herself completely to his twin, closing the door (she thought) on her love for his own self.

And wasn't that what he'd wanted, when he'd left them on the beach together? In addition to everything else, he was trying to give her a complete, whole, and happy life, one he was unable to provide himself. And everything had worked out well in the end. Very well, indeed. For all of them.

No, he had no desire to interrupt. He smiled mistily, letting decades of incredible, indelible memories flood over his shoulders, and applauded the new couple's nuptial kiss with everyone else.

^..^

The staff was quietly shooed back inside a moment later to gather up their trays of food and drinks and follow the wedding party out to the canopies and dance floor set up on the lawn. The Doctor kept out of the way, on the edges of the crowd, and found himself captivated once more as Corin and Rose moved onto the dance floor for their traditional first dance. He was trying to remember where he'd seen her wedding dress before. Even with his prodigious memory, it still took most of the song to place it: she had also worn it (was going to wear it) for the portrait that had been/would be his guide out of the mirrors. As usual, he spared a moment to grimace at the tortured language needed to handle time travel in English. Gallifreyan was much more useful for that, with its sixty-three additional verb tenses covering all possible combinations of past, present and future action.

The dance ended, but Corin kept hold of Rose's hand, signaling the orchestra conductor; he had a surprise planned. For the Doctor, too, as it turned out, though Corin never knew it. As Glen Miller's _In The Mood_ rolled across the lawn, joined by Rose's pealing laughter, the Doctor closed his eyes to recall the time he'd danced to that song with her in the TARDIS, just after picking up Jack Harkness for the first time. He could almost _feel_ her hand in his, the grating under his feet, as he'd dragged the knowledge of how to do the Charleston out of his own deep past with an almost physical effort – no way was he going to let _Harkness_ cut in here!

Without warning, his mind twisted sideways, a new scene – no, a whole _bunch_ of them – streaming out of a pocket of memory he hadn't even known was there. They cascaded past his mind's eye at lightning speed, triggered by the old song and the surroundings – not till they ended abruptly did he realize the truth of that phrasing: they had been hiding under an psy-lock, waiting for these very circumstances to act as the trigger for their retrieval. He'd set up an autosuggestion when he'd locked them away, all those decades before.

Aware that he was focusing mentally on the question of how that had come to be, rather than the content of those memories themselves, in order to delay their awful emotional impact, he made himself face them. Putting two and six together from the clues and his own subsequent retained memories resulted in an almost physical pain ricocheting from head to toes. His eyes flew open again, and he stared for a moment at the newlyweds through sudden, startling tears before abruptly turning away to make good his escape, leaving his tray of champagne glasses on a nearby table.

He knew he didn't have any choice in the matter. He had to go back.

To the beginning.

And then to the end.


	3. Ten - Rose: Trouble

**Ten/Rose: Trouble**

"_Allons-y!"_ The Doctor's glorious battle cry rang through the control room, chased around the Time Rotor by Rose's pealing laughter. She smiled lovingly at him across the console, reveling for a moment in the joyous sight of her bondmate restored to all his manic splendor. It had taken a _very_ long time to get here: literally decades of cautious experiments, easing himself back into the life of travel and adventure – even after receiving his parents' forgiveness and blessings. But finally, at long last, they had returned freely to the life they'd first known, traveling the universe and hopscotching through the time stream, occasionally returning back home to Larrik Hollow to meet up for a while with the other members of their family: Joshua, Jenny, Brandon, and the effervescent Jack Harkness. Even the inevitable times when their butting in on some local brouhaha resulted in a tragic (but necessary) sacrifice on the part of a new friend, although the Doctor was still deeply wounded by each new addition to his conscience's list, they no longer had the power to plunge him back into suicidal depression or keep him from jumping unhesitatingly into the next situation with both Converse-clad feet.

And that was just as it should be. No, the Doctor was truly healed at last – except for one little thing: he was still unable to fully regenerate. The half-dozen-or-so times he had been wounded badly enough, the vortex energy still repaired him back to the same body instead of giving him a new one. He wasn't complaining, although the process was getting steadily rougher, longer, and more excruciating. The last time it had taken almost twenty interminable minutes for the energy to burn through to his bones before fizzling out, leaving him too exhausted to even raise his head for several days.

"So where are we off to now?" Rose queried, only half expecting an answer. He took her on "mystery tours" as often as not.

"Just a short jump, two millennia into the future. You've seen this city now as it is; I want to show you how they rebuild it after the Turing Disaster wipes it out. You'll be _amazed_, I promise!"

She laughed again, reaching across her side of the console to flick switches, spin wheels, and work the bicycle pump, all without direction. (Flying the TARDIS wasn't nearly as difficult as he liked to make out, sometimes. Still, she liked to let him think he was in charge. Mostly. Men – even the Time Lord variety – are just easier to handle that way.)

She flicked the thought away with the ease of long practice before he could pick it up from her mind through their telepathic Life Bond link – luckily he was distracted with his own controls. "Ready?" he asked.

"Ready, Captain!" She grabbed the edge of the console to hang on, and reflected his grin back to him.

The instant he threw the final lever to spin them into the Void, all hell broke loose.

- Several small- and medium-sized explosions erupted at varied locations around the control room, including a couple of console panels, underneath the floor grating, and – most worryingly – a huge shower of multicolored sparks from the top of the Time Rotor itself.

- The lights in the console room dimmed, flickered, then returned with a sickly pinkish cast.

- A huge explosion from somewhere deep inside the ship sent a shockwave through their feet, the kaboom reaching their ears a moment later, just beating the sudden siren alarm the sentient time ship set off by a millisecond.

- But most immediate, pushing everything else to the far, ignored edges of Rose's conscious awareness, was the instantaneous _absence_ of the Doctor from her mind. Every second of her life for the past several decades, ever since the formation of their Life Bond, he'd been a constant loving presence in her mind, even while she slept, never gone for a instant.

Now he just wasn't there. Between one moment and the next, his mind-presense was ripped away, leaving a black, empty space colder than the deepest region of space and darker than a black hole.

Even more terrifying, physically he was still there, standing on the other side of the console, smiling back at her – but just as the sight registered in her brain, she also recognized the utter blankness of that smile, the instant glazing-over of his eyes, as if he wasn't really consciously inhabiting the body any more.

"_Mathurin?"_ Her private name for him (it meant "forever" in Gallifreyan) came out in a strangled gasp, her vocal cords almost paralyzed in terror. Then, without thinking, she reacted, racing around the console and slamming her hand down on the emergency stop lever, flicking a few more controls to bring them safely to a standstill in the Void – and swinging around to clutch desperately at his skinny frame, as he collapsed bonelessly onto the floor. She managed to catch his head and ease it down so he didn't get a concussion, at least. The screaming alarm shut off when she hit the emergency stop, but things still weren't right – but she blocked out everything else to concentrate on the Doctor.

Suddenly he was back behind his eyes, though not yet in her mind – and those beloved brown eyes were reflecting the terror she felt. Immediately, he went into convulsions, his arms and legs flailing about spastically, while all that issued from his mouth were wordless grunts and strangled half-screams, even as his eyes remained laser-locked on hers. Rose was near screaming herself, just trying to keep his head steady and keep him from hurting himself against the console. After an excruciatingly long couple of minutes, his flailing began to ease, and he seemed to begin to regain control of his body.

She scooted around to look at him right side up, placing her palms on either side of his face as he had done to her so many times, but she couldn't make the connection; she still had no psi ability. "Mathurin! It's OK, love, you're alright. I'm right here. Mathurin, I'm here." Over and over she reassured him, as he strained to recover his senses. His eyes were bulging as he stared desperately into hers, his lungs heaving, starved for oxygen.

Gradually he began to calm, while tears streamed unnoticed down his cheeks. Finally he managed to gasp out, "How far did we come?"

She didn't understand the question at first, then she twisted around and rose up onto her knees to peer at the console readout. She shook her head, confused. "There's... something wrong with the readouts. But it looks like about eleven years, love. Not long."

He grimaced at that, emitting a strangled bark that could have been laughter before it tried to turn back into tears. Struggling suddenly to sit up, he reached wooden hands to pull her close and buried his face in her neck. After a few more deep gasping breaths, he choked out the horrible truth.

"I lived through it. Rose, I lived through it in real time. All eleven years, just standing there unable to move a single muscle, or even breathe, a small, conscious, thinking part of me trapped deep inside my skull."

"Oh my god," she breathed, as the horror washed over her. She pulled him even closer, trying to will warmth into his chilled body.

After a few minutes he pulled back again, finally calmer now, and placed his hands on her face, reaching out with his mind to reestablish their torn connection. They sat with foreheads touching, breathing together, while the bond coalesced inside their minds, gluing them together again. He didn't share the memories of his ordeal, wanting to spare her, and she didn't pry.

At last they came to, the atmosphere in the control room breaking into their cocoon. The main lights were out, and the never-used emergency lighting cast a weird mauve glow on all surfaces. (Rose was confused and thrown off-balance until she remembered the Doctor, with another face, telling her that mauve was the intergalactic distress color.) Sizzles and sparks were still fizzing out from various spots, adding to the singed-electronics odor in the air. The unearthly aqua glow of the Time Rotor had dimmed to a dull grey throb, shot through with red streaks in time to the sparks.

The Doctor pulled himself up, groaning, and began checking her out – but nothing worked. Rose had been right, the readouts were strange, all mixed up – and what was that sound? Something was hovering, just outside his conscious aural range.

"Doctor?" Rose's soft voice quavered, caught between pain and fear. He spun around to see her staring up past him at the Time Rotor, tears shining in her huge brown eyes.

"What is it, love?"

"I can hear her... The TARDIS." Slowly her eyes floated down to light on his. "She's hurt, badly. Oh, Mathurin... She's crying!"


	4. Twelve: Touchback

_**A/N:** Pay attention, now (or as my daughter used to say as a toddler, copying me in the car yelling at other drivers, "pay TENshun!"), I'm about to start switching Doctors on you. I'll also be pulling in hints from both TV canon and my own stories; but this tale shouldn't rely too heavily on them, I hope.

* * *

_

**Twelve: Touchback**

_*Did you see Joshua?*_

The TARDIS's question as he walked swiftly back inside the blue box hiding in the woods behind the Tyler mansion startled the Twelfth Doctor out of his preoccupation. _*Who?*_

She sent a peppermint-scented ribbon of amusement through his mind in response, then floated a picture of Corin's Time Lord son behind his eyes. _*Joshua? What was he doing there?*_ he asked. Stronger peppermint, with a slight aftertaste of _Duh._ He scowled, irritated at her levity after his shock, but then stopped for a moment to consider his adopted son. Should he go back and bring him into this? Then he shook his head. _No. I have enough to deal with here,_ and he spun the ship into the Void without another word. Letting the momentum of the resultant bumps carry him to the jump seat, he sprawled across it, staring unseeing at the glowing column of the Time Rotor.

"Well, _ch__é__rie__,"_ he finally said aloud. "Looks like we have a job to do."

^..^

Half an hour later, refreshed from a hot shower and dressed once more in his habitual neatly-pressed faded jeans, stingray skin boots, and his favorite rugby shirt (the one with the blue stripes that precisely matched his current eyes), Twelve once more strode into the control room, bootheels rapping out his ownership in Morse code. A search of the TARDIS's data banks proved fruitless, as he thought it would; she'd been badly damaged during the incident, after all, and had recorded nothing. He was going to have to rely on both sets of his own memories instead.

A high reconnaissance flight over the time and place in question (he didn't dare go too low; the ship still flew through actual atmosphere like a drunken cow – a comparison he was careful never to articulate even in his thoughts lest she hear it) yielded a scan showing the telltale blip. As soon as she realized what was going on down below, the TARDIS prepared to swoop down and save the day, and he had to argue it out with her, sharing the memories that had been unlocked at the reception. "We can't do this by ourselves. We need help from the other side. Don't worry, _ch__é__rie_, we'll be back in time."

_*Why not Joshua?* _she demanded, reminding him again that the other TARDIS owner had been at the wedding, and Twelve shook his head again.

_*One, I don't know where he was in his personal timeline then. Two, I don't need someone on this side of the Cascade, we'll come back and handle it. And three, it's got to be this way, or else I won't even have the memories to unlock to show me the way – and we'll never get out of that fix to even be here now.*_

It was a tribute to the time ship's intelligence that she followed that last bit, he thought to himself, because he wasn't even sure _he_ did. But at last she acquiesced, with a sharp reminder to hit the Bookmark! button high on the console before setting the course back through the Medusa Cascade to their home universe. The Doctor paused a moment with his hand on the big red button that logged their current temporo-spatial position, a soft smile of memory tweaking up the corners of his mouth. _Dear Joshua. Perhaps I should go back to Larrik Hollow when this is all done and see the family again. It __has__ been a long time, and I miss Jenny and the boys. Hell, I even miss Jack!_ He'd only been back once during his eleventh life, a flying trip just to let them know Things Had Changed; unable to bear the memories, he'd fled them like a whipped dog – and knew it.

Then he sighed, shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and went in search of an even older face.

^..^

The Ninth Doctor stalked inside the TARDIS door and clicked it snugly closed behind him, sighing. _Thank all the stars __that's__ done and dusted._ It had taken all his persuasive power – and there wasn't much of it in this incarnation from the looks of it – to convince the Daniels family not to get on the Titanic. Now their youngest son, Terrence, would grow up and receive the Nobel Physics prize like he was supposed to. It had been _quite _a shock when Nine had tripped over the absence of one of his favorite scientists in the Nobel Laureate lists up in the twenty-aughts. No wonder the fledgling human space program had been three decades behind where it should have been. Now the time stream would go as it was supposed to – he could feel the shift beginning to ripple down the years already.

He sighed again, heavily, as he trudged up the ramp to the console. He'd only been going a few months in this regeneration, but it had been a long, cold slog already. Even though he'd locked up the details of what he'd done to end the Time War, burying the memories inside the TARDIS, the broad outlines hung over his shoulders like the proverbial Reapers, screeching their terrible, heart-stopping cry for his ears alone in the long lonely stretches of the night. He knew he'd be better off if he could find a congenial companion, but he just couldn't face looking for one. (Not that he'd ever really needed to _look_ for one ever before; they just seemed to show up, and usually somehow ended up inviting themselves on board to stay. Well, where was his new one? She – or he – or it – or they – were late, dammit to Rassilon!)

_Now, then, back to 2005._ There was something strange going on up there, that he'd just gotten the barest whiff of before getting sidetracked back here to 1912. He started going through the usual preflight routine around the console when without warning, he was startled down to his toes to hear the familiar _whoosh, whoosh_ –

– coming from OUTSIDE the TARDIS!

Nonplussed pale blue eyes stared down the ramp at the door, then he followed his own gaze and opened it gingerly. And there, facing him a few feet away, was an identical door. Blue. Wood. Set inside an utterly, intimately familiar Police Call Box.

He was just trying to decide whether to knock or just barge in, when the other door opened, revealing a head of tight black curls over intense blue eyes – darker than his own. He swiftly took in the rest of the vision: crisp casual clothes on a build similar to his; as the stranger leaned casually against his door jamb, crossing his arms and cocking one leg, and finally spoke.

"Hullo, me."

"Doctor?" Nine queried cautiously, netting a short confirmatory nod. "Ah. So you're next." He was about to speculate on how much time he might have left, when the other interrupted.

"Actually, there's two others between us. I'm number twelve."

"Then why are you picking on me?"

Twelve smiled. "Interesting question. I'm here because I remember this moment from your side. Believe me, given the choice, there's any number of moments I could have chosen, any number of other me's I could work with. But there it is: I'm here because I was. Cause and Effect have left the building along with Elvis."

"Well, one thing's for certain," Nine broke in. "You're as gabby as any other version of me."

"Oh, hardly. Wait until you become your successor. Now _there's_ a Doctor who couldn't keep his gob shut. But in fact," he went on, "Doctor Number Ten is why I'm here. I need your help – or rather, _he_ does. He's in need of a rescue, and we're the only ones who can do it."

Nine sighed again. (He seemed to be doing rather a lot of that today.) "And I suppose you're going to tell me that I'm going to help, because you remember me doing so."

"Yup!" came the cheerful affirmative.

Nine's eyes narrowed suddenly. "First prove you're really me. What –"

"The Lost Moon of Poosh," supplied Twelve, before the younger man could even finish asking what he was thinking of. He went on, ruminating, "I should set that up as my 'secret handshake', for future use. It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while I do run into myself."

"'Secret handshake'?" queried Nine, netting another smile.

"Code of recognition. A friend of mine – you'll meet him shortly, in fact – has one. Useful concept, that, for time travelers." Twelve flashed a quick grin at the memory of Jack Harkness calling his younger self "Jackass", but didn't bother explaining it. "So. Shall we discuss the situation?"

"Your place or mine?" asked Nine wryly.

The older Time Lord glanced behind him at the remodeled interior, greatly changed from the one he knew was across the gap – and that only the visible surface changes. _*Sorry, __ch__é__rie__, I can't let him in here. You understand why.*_ His TARDIS flashed a pouty, reluctant maroon agreement through his mind, and he blew her a mental kiss, then stepped outside and locked the door behind him.

"Yours."


	5. Ten - Rose: Mysteries

**Ten/Rose: Mysteries**

The Doctor closed his eyes, concentrating, mentally tuning in what the TARDIS was telepathically broadcasting. Though most often less than verbal, she had retreated even further into incoherence, radiating naught but pain and fear. He tried his best to reassure her, but wasn't sure if she heard or understood. Giving Rose a swift hug, he then enlisted her aid in attempting to assess the time ship's condition and their own predicament, as much to distract and keep her from getting lost in the ship's crying as actually needing her help. (He DID need her help; she'd become a top-notch copilot the last years. He just wasn't about to admit it.)

First priority was trying to make sense of the readouts to see when and where they were – if anywhere. Apparently they _had_ skipped ahead about eleven years from their last point, which _should_ put them somewhere in 1912. They seem to have drifted a bit in space; Paris was no longer around them, but he couldn't decipher what was.

Rose, her eyes gleaming with the memory of Mickey's simple solution to that problem, suddenly walked down the ramp to the door and flung it open, hoping to see something familiar. No such luck. "Uh, Doctor?"

"Wha... Oh!" He'd half expected to see the swirling nothingness of the Void. Instead, it was nothing, all right – the nothing of a solid sheet of ice covering the entire opening. Joining her at the door, he tried the sonic screwdriver. "It's dozens of feet thick. We're encased in it! Is it a glacier?" He sighed, blowing out a frustrated raspberry. "I can't tell." Finally he shook his head, closed the door, and led her back to the vid screen.

Next he tried to pin down the date, with equally dismal results. All the various readouts kept shifting from one setting to another; most of them, he finally realized, were bouncing back and forth between two distinct sets, just far enough off each other to be noticeable.

"It's almost like..." he muttered aloud.

"Like...?" Rose prompted, and at last he looked straight at her.

"Like we're shifting between parallel worlds, again – but this time, instead of falling through a hole and landing in the opposite world, we keep fading back and forth. Like we're caught in between, and can't quite break through to either side."

"The same world as before? Pete's World, where Corin and my twin are?"

"I think so... Let me check." Squatting down, he sonicked open a side panel below the console – and suddenly fell back on his hands, his mouth dropping open.

"Mathurin? What is it?" Very concerned now, Rose began to come around to that side, but he flung up one hand, stopping her.

"No, love, stay over there! Don't look!" It wasn't until that moment that she realized which panel he'd opened: the one containing the access to the vortex energy pool. The one she'd struggled so long to open all the way back when she'd become Bad Wolf.

It was also where he'd carefully grafted on the bit of TARDIS coral from Joshua's Baby; which would eventually allow them to return through the Medusa Cascade to Pete's World – and Pacifica.

"What's wrong?" she prompted again.

"The vortex is weakened. There's hardly any energy there – and what is there just... doesn't look right." Now that he mentioned it, the wisps of energy that were seeping out certainly looked anemic even to her: a sluggish, dull ochre rather than the mesmerizing, eye-searing white-gold brilliance she'd seen before. The Doctor picked up his sonic again and whizzed it inside the panel a few times, then replaced the panel and slowly climbed back to his feet, eyes huge.

"The grafted bit is reacting in time to the changing readings, alternating with the main coral, so I think we're right about the two parallel worlds. The other one is Pete's. But... it's not the shifting between worlds that's causing the anemic vortex. It's like she's sick, like she's caught some disease or infection..." His voice trailed off, his eyes unfocusing as he chewed over the problem. "How long has this been going on, and I never noticed?"

"Is this..." Rose faltered, then took a deep breath and tried again. "Is this why you can't regenerate fully?"

His attention snagged, he looked at her straight, then shook his head. "No. I really don't think so. I think I know why I'm stuck, actually. And it's not her fault. It was Rassilon."

"_Rassilon?"_ Her voice was full of surprise, and he flashed a quick grin for it.

"Yeah. Remember the last time I faced him? I showed you those memories." She nodded. "The Master had forced his template onto everyone on Earth, then Rassilon and the other Council members appeared, and the Master tried to send it to them, as well. Rassilon not only blocked that, he blew the template off everyone else at the same time. Even I felt something. And I think what I felt was a blowback, that locked me into this body somehow. Took me a long time to realize it, but I think that's why I can't change now." Pausing, he blew out a breath and shook his head, gazing again at the sluggish grey mist in the heart of the Time Rotor. "But that doesn't explain why the partial regens have been getting longer and harder. _That..._ could be from whatever's affecting – or infecting – her." Another thought occurred to him, and he cocked his head to consider it. "Although... if her vortex pool _had_ been at full strength, and uninfected, I would have thought that would have been enough to overcome the blowback lock, too. Hmmm..."

He began to wander around the console again, working the odd control with a half-absent air while he chewed over the problem, then settled at the vid screen to work through various diagnostics. Rose curled up on the jump seat and watched, pulling up her knees and wrapping her arms around them. She mentally tuned in the TARDIS again, and found she'd quieted a little, but was still sending out waves of pain and anguish.

Suddenly she couldn't bear it. "It's my fault, isn't it?" she blurted out. Startled, he turned to stare at her over his shoulder.

"I infected her, didn't I? I know the vortex energy returns to her after it's done its job – I've seen it. This all started with me! First with the Bad Wolf – and you took the energy from me, then regenerated, and THAT was a bad one, too, you said so. It took you _hours_ to recover. Then when I was twinned, _that_ was through vortex energy, too. And even since then – I know what you haven't told me, that I've still been using it; that's how I recovered from whatever was wrong with me on Pacifica that time. But it's not meant to be used by humans!" She paused, then repeated, "It's my fault. Isn't it?"

To his credit, and her honor, he stopped and thought it over rather than rushing in with an automatic denial. But then he shook his head. "It can't be. No, even with the Bad Wolf... That would only have made a difference if there had been a serious drain on the vortex pool in the months just before that – and there wasn't! It hadn't even been drained during the Time War – not like that – and that was too long before then, anyway." He turned fully away from the console, stepping over to the jump seat to pull her into his arms. "No, love, it wasn't your fault. Whatever is affecting her is from some other source." He shook his head again. "For all I know, it might have been Baby that got infected, and passed it on to her with the graft. But it wasn't you, love. It wasn't you."

^..^

Rose let him think she was reassured, though she couldn't quite get rid of the nagging feeling of guilt, and pushed him gently back to his work. She'd learned to pilot the time ship, but knew nothing of how it worked, so she could offer him no help in diagnosing the current problem. Curling up again and turning sideways, she leaned against the back of the jump seat and let her mind drift. One part of her mind communing still with the TARDIS, she didn't notice as she drifted into a doze, slipping once more into her recurring dream, the one she had now nearly every time she slept. She dreamed always of soaring bodiless through endless warm, dark currents, following tiny snatches of music; fantastic, numinous melodies far beyond any human range of sound. Something was wrong this time, though. Invisible bonds were holding her in place, bonds that scorched and seared as she strained against them. Again and again she launched her will against those bonds, again and again they slammed her back. At last, exhausted, she lay bonelessly on cold, unseen ground, straining her mental ears to hear the heavenly melodies from afar.

"What's that?" The Doctor's puzzled voice, raised above the low-volume muttering that had lulled her to sleep snatched her awake again, and she jerked upright on the jump seat. She strained through the mauve emergency lighting – he still hadn't been able to bring the main power back on – to see him standing straight, head cocked as if listening.

"What's what?" she asked.

"Shhhhh. Listen."

Finally, she heard it too – at first she thought her dream melodies had followed her out of the darkness, but then, as the sound came clearer (as if some invisible hand were turning up the volume) it resolved into the tinkling of a music box. Which was puzzling enough in itself, as they had none on board (that she knew of). She listened closer, and then suddenly it clicked. "My music box!"

He turned puzzled eyes on her, and she explained. "That's the tune – the _exact_ tune – of the music box I had as a kid." She hummed along with the ghostly music, making the tune clearer.

Suddenly his expression twisted even further into shocked amazement. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! That's the _same tune_ you had as a girl?" She nodded. "You're absolutely certain?"

She listened again, and nodded again. He stared, bug-eyed, which made her start to feel faintly alarmed. "Why...?"

"Rose... It's the same tune!" She obviously didn't get that, until he started singing along with the tinkling notes. "_And I love you, and will forever..."_

The connection abruptly fell into place. "Tis'hania's Tears! Your mother's song, at your father's funeral!" Both mouths gaping open, they stared at each other. "How...?" How had that song traveled across time and half the universe, to end up in _her_ music box, years before she even met the Doctor?

"I have _no_ idea..." he replied. Then he shook his head sharply, clearing it. "Nor do I know where that's coming from!" He looked around the control room. "Walls are breaking down everywhere..."

"You can say that again!" boomed a disgusted voice from the far side of the Time Rotor.


	6. Nine - Twelve: Conference

_**A/N:** This is just too funny not to share. I'd just finished typing the first two paragraphs, and decided to turn on my internet radio (to drown out the neighbors). I'll bet you'll never guess which extremely popular movie theme was first on the play list!

* * *

_

**Nine/Twelve: Conference**

Nine's jaw dropped. "You have GOT to be joking!" Twelve simply grinned. "He's _inside_ the iceberg? _THE_ iceberg? The one that's going to sink that ship out there five days from now? You're _absolutely certain_ it's the same one?"

His future self just nodded, confirming each increasingly-squeaky question.

"How in the name of Rassilon did he manage to get in there?"

"Actually," Twelve began, leaning casually against the railing inside Nine's TARDIS (he'd forgotten how the control room had been arranged back then; it certain looked odd to his eyes). "I think it formed around him. Absolute zero space bleedoff from the Void slippage from the constantly-cycling reentry. You see, the reason he's stuck there is due to... well, I can't give you too much, you understand, but the TARDIS's vortex has been affected."

"So how are we supposed to help?"

"I need you to get close enough to send a beam of vortex energy from your own pool across to replenish his."

Nine's eyebrows flared again, instantly alarmed. "Won't that deplete _my_ pool, setting up the very circumstances he's in? You said he's next – number Ten."

Twelve kept his bland expression plastered tight on his face while he handwaved the issue away. "No, no – there are several decades between you and him, this is _years_ later. No problem."

The other Doctor stared at him a moment longer, seemingly suspicious of the easy reassurance, but then shook his head and turned to the other issue bothering him. "So why do you need _me_ to do this? Can't you do it yourself?"

Twelve gave him a tight smile. "Because, Doctor, he's not just trapped in the iceberg, he's also trapped between two parallel worlds, oscillating back and forth between them. I _will_ be helping – but on the other side, in the other world."

Nine's jaw had dropped again. "But the walls between worlds are closed! Nobody can get through any more, since our people closed them off!"

"Not anymore. We found a way through – I've been in this other world several times." He plowed on, wanting to distract his former self from that issue, as well. "So while you're here, sending the vortex energy to both replenish his pool and throw a lifeline, as it were, I'll be there, sending a broad-beam Z-neutrino energy pulse to repel his TARDIS away from that world and back to this one. As long as we time it right, within a few minutes of each other, our two beams should act like a pair of opposing magnets, sucking him completely into this one."

"Z-neutrinos! Are you _insane?_ You know how dangerous that stuff is! You actually _carry some around?"_

"Only a very tiny amount – and it's only truly dangerous if flattened into a single stream. Believe me, I'll be keeping it on a wide angle, and feeding just enough to repel the TARDIS out of that world."

Nine thought it through and was forced to accept the solution. "But... that means we'd have to send our beams not just at the same time, but from the exact same angle! How..." It hit him, and he wilted. "No..."

Twelve grinned again. "Yup! Time for a sea cruise, Doctor!"

That netted him the strongest glare yet. "You actually want me to get on board the Titanic? And spend the next four days how, playing shuffleboard? … How about if I just skip out there and meet it?"

"Go ahead, if you really think you can hit the target," replied Twelve casually, knowing full well that his younger selves had NEVER had that kind of fine control of the TARDIS.

Nine was absolutely disgusted at this point. "Just tell me one thing. Why should I care? I know why _you_ care, but me... I'm sick of all this. You know why." Twelve nodded, remembering. The Time War. It hadn't been all that long ago... "So why should I care whether a future me lives or dies? Why should I help you, or him?"

Suddenly Twelve lost his patience, launching himself off the railing and a couple of steps towards the other man. "Oh, come on, Doctor! You're not that thick! What happens when a TARDIS loses its vortex, and the containment field for the transdimensional space pocket?"

"It implodes. So?" His arms crossed, he radiated uncaring disdain.

Twelve leaned intently across the control panel on both fists. "And if the TARDIS is trapped in a Void pocket at the time, oscillating between two worlds, at the exact same point in time and space in each?"

Nine's eyes grew round, and his disdain melted off his face. "It'll create a black hole..." he almost whispered, and Twelve took it up.

"... which will wipe out this entire star system, in _both_ worlds, taking out all of humanity before they even take their first step to the stars."

Nine wilted, closing his eyes for a moment and blowing out a huge sigh. "All right. Fine." He perked up sarcastically, mocking himself. "One ticket for the Titanic, please!" He glanced back at his future self. "You sure we couldn't just fly out there straight and hover above it? We could take care of the iceberg before the ship even gets there."

Twelve shook his head. "One, you know full well that the sinking of the Titanic is a fixed point – spurring technology and safety development in hundreds of fields, some leading directly to the space program. And two, you also know full well that this ship flies like a drunken cow..." He caught himself, wincing hard, and shot a deeply apologetic look at the Time Rotor. "Sorry..."

Nine was amusedly confused. "You know she didn't hear that; she's not that verbal."

_*But I did...*_ Twelve's own TARDIS's voice slipped into his mind on their link – but it was tinged in pouty peppermint amusement, with undertones of payback to come. He winced again, then shook it off.

"Well, then, Doctor?"

Nine waved his arms, giving in. "All right! – Pending verification of the situation when I get close enough to scan the berg, of course. When shall we begin the beams?"

"One hour before impact. He won't be in range before then, but that should still give enough time to send enough energy to get him out. Hopefully that will happen before the impact, but even if not, it won't matter. The Titanic will be drifting close to the berg until it sinks, which will give us two more hours if needed."

"I certainly hope they won't be. All right, then. Impact was at 23:40, so at 22:40, 14 April, we'll begin." He looked at his future reflection. "Since you'll be in the parallel, I suppose I won't see you again then?"

"I sincerely hope not. Good luck, Doctor!" He stuck out his hand, and Nine took it after a moment's automatic hesitation; even though it didn't apply to him, the prohibition against 'ordinary' people touching themselves in a time loop always gave him pause.

Twelve took the ramp to the door with long strides, then paused at the bottom and turned back. "Doctor... one more thing."


	7. Ten - Rose: Most Unhelpful

**Ten/Rose: Most Unhelpful**

Both Rose and the Doctor jumped about a foot as the deep, scornful voice boomed out, staring bugeyed at each other for a moment longer before turning to peek around the Time Rotor. Standing on the far side of the console, arms crossed, a look of supreme irritation and disgust on his hawklike face, stood a regal-looking man in Edwardian dress, his silver hair combed straight back into a majestic mane. "Well?" he demanded imperiously.

The Doctor gulped, tried to speak, gulped again. Suddenly his nonplussed look was joined by one of confusion. "I don't remember this..."

"Oh, and you think you should remember every single moment of your existence?" came yet another voice from one side. Rose and the Doctor jumped again, swiveling around in unison to see an even taller man with a mass of curls on his head and an impossibly long, striped scarf trailing from neck to toes.

"I _definitely_ don't remember _this!_" cried Ten.

"_Doctor?_" Rose broke in on his confusion with her own greater case.

"They're _me_. Both of them. One," he pointed to the first speaker, then swung his finger to the other, "and Four."

"You've met yourself before," Rose reminded him (and herself, trying to deal with this _very_ odd situation).

"Yes, but not this way. I don't _ever_ remember this combination. Wait a minute..." Ten's eyes were still flicking back and forth between his old faces – who were suspiciously silent, simply glaring at him. Taking a couple of careful steps, he sidled over to the nearer Fourth Doctor, reached out...

… and his hand went right through "his" shoulder.

"What'd you do that for?" demanded Four, curls bobbing.

Ten ignored him, turning back to Rose with something akin to relief – kind of. "They're not real. They're just ghosts, conjured up out of the TARDIS's memory banks somehow."

"Ghosts..." Rose replied, glancing beyond him to where another figure was just popping into existence, this time with a panama hat, safari jacket and paisley scarf.

Ten followed her glance, then resolutely turned back towards the console. "Yeah. Just ignore them," he added, almost managing to sound convinced himself. A chorus of hoots greeted the suggestion.

"Right," said Rose.

Over the next few minutes, five more figures popped in, and the Ghost Doctors fell to quarreling between themselves, alternating that with firing derisive remarks at their Tenth incarnation. Ten did his best to follow his own advice and ignore them all, concentrating on puttering around the console and trying to figure the way out of their predicament. Rose, without the luxury of having that to concentrate on, found herself watching her bondmate's former selves out of the corners of her eyes, matching their faces with the ones from the memories he had shared with her over the years. She kept looking around for a particular face above a black leather jacket, but Nine was the one Doctor who stayed away from the ghostly reunion. All the ones who did show up ignored her completely, as if they couldn't see her, and continued showering the current Doctor's head with imprecations and dire warnings.

Suddenly she couldn't stand it, and started giggling. Ten popped his head up and stared at her, exasperated. "What in the world are you laughing at?" His voice cracked.

She waved a hand around the room. "The Ghosts of Doctors Past," she labeled them airily. "I was just wondering if the Future was going to show up, too."

"Gah! I sincerely hope not," he replied. He peeked around under his eyebrows, but they seemed to be ignoring him at the moment, and leaned towards her conspiratorily. "I really don't want to know..." He managed a grin, and she smiled back in sympathy.

"Oh my giddy aunt!" declared one of the ghosts, staring at the pair. "How in the world I managed to get so bloody thick is beyond me! The answer's right under your nose, you nincompoop!"

"No!" cried another. "Now LISTEN to me! You've simply got to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!"

That got to Ten, and he whirled around to glare at the speaker, a dandy in a purple velvet smoking jacket. "Oh, SHUT UP! That was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now, and you know it!"

"Of COURSE it's nonsense!" put in the previous Doctor. "Like I said, the answer's under your nose!"

Rose involuntarily glanced down at her own self, seeing the TARDIS key on its chain around her neck. She picked it up thoughtfully, wondering...

Ten, catching her as he swung back around, was stopped by a sudden thought. "He's right..." They looked at each other. "We've got to get out of here," Ten went on. "No matter what else, we've got to get out of the Void pocket and all the way in to one of the parallels – preferably our own." (The ghost who'd made the suggestion threw up his hands in disgust and turned back to his neighbor with another sarcastic comment on Ten's intelligence; Ten and Rose both ignored him.)

"But we can't!" cried Rose. "What about what happened last time! You were trapped, living through it in real time!"

He shook his head. "So we won't attempt a time jump – just one through space, and directly into one of the worlds, just like we jumped between them before. And we won't go very far, either." He glanced down the ramp at the closed door, remembering the ice sheet beyond. "Presuming that we're inside a glacier – that seems reasonable, and is the largest hunk of ice I can think of, anyway – if we jump straight UP, say... five miles... that would put us well above the biggest glacier known on Earth. If I do get mentally dragged behind somehow, it's still a short enough hop that I can get through it." He stopped for a moment, taking in her mulish look. "Rose... I can handle it. But we've GOT to get out of here while we still can."

Knowing he was right, she gave in, nodding reluctantly. "All right. How do we snag the right world?"

Working from the memory of previous trips between the worlds, he showed her the settings he'd used before to take her "home" to Bad Wolf Bay with his metacrisis twin and Jackie – but this time, reversing it to try to snag the other world. She wound up on the panel to his left – and reached over to take his hand for comfort and courage.

The (living) Doctor took a deep breath, blowing it out at once. "Ready?"

"Ready, Captain!" And he flicked the switch.

The TARDIS tried. Oh, she tried... A single _whoosh._ A painful pause. Then, _whoOGGGGGG._ The silvery-rushing sound of her normal passage slipped sideways down the scale into a monstrous roar, filling the console room and their ears and their heads with reverberating sound, as if they'd been transported inside some gigantic ocean liner's horn stack. The room shook with it, so fast and so hard that it seemed the very atoms would fly apart. A few did – and even Rose saw the tiny streaks of impossibly bright light fly across her vision. Then suddenly the walls ballooned outward, every bit of matter between them streeeeetching like a 3-D rubber sheet for a moment, before SNAPping back into place, sucking the last of the reverb up with it.

The Doctor and Rose found themselves knocked back on the floor, gasping for oxygen in the sudden stillness and utter quiet, still holding on to each other's hand. Slowly they turned their heads to stare bugeyed and openmouthed at each other.

"Or maybe not..." he squeaked.

"Yeah," she agreed. She looked around slowly. "Well, one good thing, anyway." She tipped her head beyond the console. "The ghosts are gone."

He followed her eyes, discovering the blank space so recently filled with derisive specters. "That's good!" he agreed.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the already-dismal lights dimmed even further, and a deep, stark, mournful bell began tolling above their heads. Rose felt the Doctor go still and cold as the ice surrounding the ship, "heard" the shock go zinging through his mind.

"Doctor?" she gasped. "What is it?"

"The cloister bell," he choked out. He turned to look at her with the biggest, roundest eyes she'd ever seen, his face blanched dead white. "It's a warning alarm...

… for the end of the world!"


	8. Nine - Twelve: Parallel Voyages

**Nine/Twelve: Parallel Voyages**

At first, the Ninth Doctor was determined to stay inside the TARDIS (tucked away in a forward cargo deck right next to a pristine Model T car) for the entire trip, but soon found his own natural (slightly morbid) curiosity driving him out among the doomed passengers. _Oh stop it,_ he scolded himself. _They're not ALL doomed. Just two-thirds of them._ He turned his nose up at the toffs, though, drifting naturally down to the decks where the second- and third-class passengers were.

Very late that evening he found himself on the promenade deck near the stern gazing at the stars and chatting idly with a young American artist on his way home. He was captivated by how incredibly clear the air was; it wouldn't be long before vistas like this with its millions of visible stars would be permanently smogged over and lost from Earth-bound view forever.

They fell silent after a while, each lost in their own thoughts – which were suddenly interrupted by the patter of slippered feet, as a young woman in fancy dress – obviously a misplaced first class passenger – staggered blindly by. Jack, the artist, popped his head up to stare after her, and then jumped up to follow.

Nine just shook his head. _Humans. Stupid hormone-riddled apes._ He stayed where he was, leaning against the railing, watching the stars again while listening in on their conversation with his ultra-sharp hearing. Apparently Jack was talking her out of jumping from the railing, warning her about the ice-cold water below. _Well, you'll know what you're facing three nights from now. _Suddenly disgusted by his own cynicism, Nine launched himself off his perch and stalked back to the TARDIS, looking for a snack. It was going to be a very long trip.

^..^

The Twelfth Doctor had spent a very enjoyable day topside watching the first class ninnies prance and preen. (He'd made a quick side trip on the way back through to the alternate universe, discovering that Barron's had been established back in the 1800's, and picked up an entire wardrobe suitable for the Titanic's rarefied upper decks.) A few well-chosen words and "Doctor Smythe" was immediately established as _one of us_ in the minds of the cream of society thus traveling. This incarnation being fascinated with the vagaries of human and humanoid behavior, he was entranced by the opportunity to study this particular breed, Early Twentieth-Century _Homo wealthius,_ up close.

He was also amused to catch a glimpse of the alternate world version of the young woman who had captivated the artist, Jack, on the other Titanic. He watched her surreptitiously from another table as she verbally skewered the clueless White Star owner at lunch, and nearly had a conniption fit at the man she was apparently traveling with, leaving the table abruptly before the meal had even been served. _There is a hell of a lot more to this young lady than meets the eye – especially that nitwit's eye._ He didn't waste a second glance at the woman's companion; a brainless, overweening prat if he ever saw one. _Must be the name,_ he added with a wry mental grin – because of course, her name was Rose.

He'd forgotten the next part of the story, but her stumbling by him late that night on the deck reminded him. He looked around, expecting Jack's head to pop up from a nearby bench ...

…. but nothing happened. Jack wasn't there. The deck was empty but for himself and the lady.

"Oh, no-no-no-no-no!" Twelve slipped swiftly after the redheaded Rose, catching her just as she put her foot on the railing to begin climbing over – literally catching her, throwing both arms around her and dragging her back a couple of steps. This was no time for subtlety.

"Let me go!" she cried, startled out of her wits; she'd been too preoccupied to hear him come up behind her.

"No, Rose, no! I won't let you do this. This is not the way, Rose, it's not the way!"

She gave up struggling, he was much too strong. Instead, she began sobbing. "I can't do this anymore! I can't stand living like that. I'm trapped - I can't breathe!" So wrapped up in her misery was she that it didn't occur to her yet that she had no idea who this man was.

"I know, Rose. I know. You are much too good for them. But Rose, listen. You'll find a way out. You'll escape. I'm absolutely certain. You'll escape from their trap, and go on to live a long, wonderful life, full of freedom and adventure." He didn't know where the words were coming from, but they had the ring of truth. _Interesting,_ he thought fleetingly. _I haven't been a fortuneteller since my eighth life._ He wrenched his thoughts away from that path and back onto the woman in his arms.

"How? How can I escape?"

"I don't know, Rose – but you will. You'll know the moment when you see it. And you'll grab onto it with both hands, and slip away like mist, and follow your dreams."

His words had caught her attention, throwing her the lifeline she so desperately needed. Suddenly she came to, realizing the situation. "Let me go," she repeated – much more calmly this time.

He didn't relax a muscle. "Not until you promise you won't jump."

She stared at the water beyond the railing, ice-cold, like her frozen heart. She hadn't felt warm in so very long – not since her father had died, leaving her and her mother in such a precarious financial position that marrying Cal had been the only way to survive. But in that instant, she knew she didn't have it in her to cross the railing again.

"I promise."

As if he'd read her mind to hear the truth of the words, his arms dropped immediately and he stepped back a pace. Unfortunately, he also took his warmth with him, and she shivered uncontrollably in the icy night. Instantly, he shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it around her shoulders. The simple act of kindness caught her attention again, and she turned at last to look into the face of her rescuer.

He was a complete stranger. Several inches taller than herself, he looked to be in his mid-thirties, slim but giving an unmistakable impression of strength hiding under the tailored evening suit; with short, curly black hair and eyes the astonishing blue of the deep ocean under the midday sun. She shook her head, confused. "How do you know my name?"

His eyes twinkled. "I heard someone call you by name this afternoon. I'm the Doctor, by the way. Doctor Mathurin Smythe." The tip of his head could almost be called a bow.

"Mathurin? That's French, isn't it?" she queried, taking in his slightly olive complexion and aquiline nose.

A small, kind smile stretched his lips. "Just so," he replied, and she took it for confirmation. "I confess, though," he went on, "I only caught your first name?"

"Rose Dewitt Bukater. Soon to be Rose Hockley." She said it as though she was trying to convince herself of it.

"Oh, I doubt that. I doubt it very much."

There it was again, as if he knew her. "Why?" She should be insulted, but couldn't muster the indignation, exposed as she was before him.

Head tilted to one side, he studied her for a moment. "Because you're far too intelligent, and courageous, and kindhearted. You don't belong with those... brainless strutting peacocks, any more than I do." He waved a vague hand back towards the ballrooms and staterooms at the bow.

Her lips quirked. "I see you've met them."

He laughed easily, his eyes twinkling merrily. "This batch? Only by reputation. I'm familiar with the breed, however."

She smiled back, glancing shyly away for a moment before raising questioning eyes to his again. Before she could pose the question within them, however, they were startled by the sound of someone clearing his throat a few paces away.

Turning, they saw a tall, muscular, humorless man with the dangerous air of a former policeman standing back near the stairs. "Mr Hockley is looking for you, Miss," he announced pretentiously, and the Doctor pegged him as a manservant of some type.

Rose turned her head swiftly the other way with an exasperated gasp, humiliation coloring her cheeks. Wanting to save her any scrap of dignity he could, the Doctor caught her eye and gallantly offered his arm. "May I escort you back inside, Miss Rose?"

Surprised, she looked into his eyes, tempted, then visibly gathered her dignity back around her. "Thank you, but no. I'm fine. I'll be fine." His eyes flickered, acknowledging the change of wording – and she realized it herself at the same moment. Pitching her voice just a touch louder for the benefit of the manservant, she told him, "Thank you for showing me the -" The effect was enhanced, rather that ruined, by the distraction of her forgetting the word, twirling her finger in the air.

"Propeller?" supplied the Doctor.

"Right. Propeller." Remembering, she slipped his jacket off her shoulders and returned it to its owner. "Good evening, Doctor Smythe."

This time, he tipped his head and upper torso – and it really was a courtly bow.

He turned to watch her sail regally past the manservant, who was still gazing at the Doctor. He was a master at the flat, snakelike stare, not giving the slightest hint of emotion.

But the Doctor was even better at it, and tinged his with the slightest hint of arrogant disdain in return. After a few seconds, the manservant blinked, gave him a tiny, tight smile, and turned to follow Rose back to her fiancé's side.

Leaving the Doctor to watch the woman named Rose walk away, caught in the echoes of his memories.


	9. Ten - Rose: The Ultimate Sacrifice

**Ten/Rose: The Ultimate Sacrifice**

The continuing ominous tolling of the cloister bell launched the Doctor up off the floor and back to the TARDIS vid screen, whizzing his sonic across it again and again (which he only ever used on his beloved ship in the most dire circumstances) in a desperate attempt to divine the exact situation. Rose could only watch from the side, clutching her arms around her torso, as she became conscious again of the sentient ship's psychic distress. Apparently finding what he sought, the Doctor suddenly stopped cold, his face blanching even whiter, then he dove again for the panel low on the side, ripping it open to gaze once more at what remained of the vortex pool.

Rose, standing on that side, could also see the remains of that once-brilliant energy: a dark, torpid sludge that roiled sullenly inside its crystal-and-coral chamber.

His anguished gaze traveled upward to the glass column of the Time Rotor, now as lifeless as the sludge below. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry," he whispered brokenly.

"Mathurin?" Rose put a world of fearful question in his name, and at last he turned to face her.

"She's dying. Sh... she's really dying."

"And the bell?"

He gasped, sucking in air as if feeling the ship's pain. "When she loses the containment on the transdimensional pocket, that makes her bigger on the inside, she'll implode. And since we're in a Void pocket, oscillating between two worlds..." He stopped, not wanting to say it, hiding his face in the guise of rubbing it with both hands. She stepped closer, putting a gentle hand on his arm, and after a moment he went on. "The implosion is going to create a black hole, swallowing up the entire solar system: Earth, the Sun, everything. In both universes. And all the people. Oh, god, Rose, it's only 1912. Humans will be wiped out, before they even make it into space."

She stared, utterly horrified, then shook her head, unwilling to accept it. "How can we stop it? What can we do to help her?"

He took a huge breath, then let it out. "There's only one thing I can think of – and I can't... I have no idea if it will work. But it's all we've got. Rose... it's _all we've got._" The emphasized repetition told her instantly that she wasn't going to like it – _at all._

"You remember the first time we fell through the hole into Pete's World? I thought that she had died, but then I found that one little light, and recharged it. You were outside, you didn't see. I recharged it by giving up some of my own life force. I told Mickey I'd given up ten years of my life, but really... I have no idea how much it was. You can't really count it up like that." Aware he was babbling, as usual, he ruthlessly cut himself off and laid it out plain. "All I can do is give her some of my life force, and hope there's enough to replenish the vortex pool – at least enough to get you out of here."

She started shaking her head, denying the obvious, but he grabbed her hands and held on. "Rose... you've become a great pilot. You know enough to get out of here – the controls are all still set from that last attempt. All you have to do is throw the switch and make that jump, then set yourself down in a good time and place."

"Until you regenerate..." she said cautiously. _Surely that's what he meant. Please let that be what he meant._

But he was shaking his head. "It may take every drop that I have."

"NO!" Tears were streaking down her face, and he dropped her hands to place his palms gently on either cheek, wiping the tears off with his thumbs.

"This was always the choice in front of me, love, from the day I first came to this wonderful, fantastic, brilliant planet. Some day it would come to this." His voice was ragged, and he stopped to swallow hard. "I just want to be sure... that you'll be OK, too."

"Not without you. I'll never be OK without you."

"Yes, you will. You've always been strong, and you'll continue to be strong. You'll go on. Who knows, maybe you're supposed to be the TARDIS's next pilot. Maybe that's what this has all been leading up to." _Maybe that's why no Ghost of Doctor Yet to Come appeared._ But he kept that thought strictly to himself.

There was so much more he wanted, needed, to say, but the cloister bell was still tolling, louder and more insistent. He had to act. So he pulled her close for a final kiss, trying to pour every iota of love he had into it, sending it on their telepathic link, as well, and feeling her give it back in equal measure. _*n'ha tolaren mathurin*_ I will love you forever. Whose mind sent it, whose received it, was neither recognized nor mattered. It was simply there, acknowledged Truth.

Then he pulled back at last, put his hands on her hips, and gently pushed her back towards the jump seat. Her hands clutched at him, not wanting to let go, but then she had to, and she sat down hard, hands flying up to plaster her mouth to keep the screams inside.

Swiftly, before he could change his mind, he swiveled around again to kneel once more before the vortex panel, took a deep breath, and plunged both hands inside, reaching through the cold viscous pool to grasp the living coral beneath. Instantly his hands turned to ice as his precious life force was sucked out of them, then the cold crept up his arms to his shoulders, the sludge following it atop his skin. The vortex energy wasn't sinking inside him like it always had, but was clinging to the surface like thick, freezing oil, sucking him dry, leeching out his life force along with every bit of warmth. Gravity pulled it down to cover the rest of his body before it crept up over his head, but by that time he was already unconscious. As the sludge coated his permanently tousled hair, Rose felt his presence in her mind loosen, and it seeped away like mist.

The universe paused, every creature in existence holding its breath.

Then he slowly toppled over, his hands coming off the coral, and he landed on his side, the vortex sludge clotting on his skin while some clumps drifted back into the chamber. Rose sprang loose from the jump seat and flew to his side, rolling him on his back, listening for nonexistent heartbeats, trying vainly to connect with his mind, crying out his names – all of them – all to utterly no avail.

And the bell kept tolling.

She looked around wildly, seeing nothing had changed. The main lights were still down, the console indicator lights flickering dimly, the vortex pool still an inky clotted sludge.

The Doctor was dead.

And all for nothing.


	10. Nine - Twelve: Operation Rescue

**Nine/Twelve: Operation Rescue**

Nine spent the rest of the shortened voyage alternating between skulking inside the TARDIS and wandering about below decks. He stumbled into a raucous party in steerage one evening and installed himself in a corner to watch, managing to stay relatively entertained for a few hours. Jack showed up partway through with his new first-class lady friend, who he introduced only as Rose. The working-class partygoers were wary of her at first, but she quickly fit right in, downing an entire beer at one gulp and dancing the night away with Jack, smiling and laughing all the while. (Neither of them noticed the sinister figure reeking (to the Doctor's sensitive nostrils) of private detective glowering at them from the staircase. The Doctor did, but since the man slunk away after a few minutes, he declined to say anything to his young friends.)

Finally the endless fourth day at sea drew to a close, and Nine returned to the TARDIS at sunset to prepare his lifeline to his next life. It was a tricky thing to set up, but he'd had several days to plan it, and had come up with a workable solution. He'd worked through the night before digging up leftover bits and pieces of the weapons systems that had been attached to the TARDIS during the Time War and then dumped into a storage room deep inside the ship's bowels and forgotten. Reassembled — or rather, assembled into a new configuration — the Reiki waveform manipulator should do the job creditably. He paid careful attention to the intake valve, setting up an automatic shutoff if the level in his vortex pool got too low — then kept fiddling with it, resetting it higher or lower, uncharacteristically indecisive about how much he could trust the Twelfth Doctor's reassurances of the potential damage. Finally, muttering "to hell with it", he set it lower than prudence otherwise dictated. _If I can't trust myself, who can I trust?_

At last, all was in readiness, and he leaned against the jump seat to watch the final countdown, idly considering the young couple he'd inadvertently befriended. Would they both survive the coming night? And if so, would they make it as a couple? Maybe he should offer them a ride... That would solve his companionless state nicely, and perhaps put a tiny bandage over his inevitable guilt at the hundreds of others who would perish in the looming disaster. He sighed heavily. He'd always intended to stay very far away from this Fixed Point. It was so cosmically unfair that here he was, all because of his own future folly. He entertained himself for the last few minutes thinking up creative curses for the (to him) faceless Tenth Doctor.

At precisely 22:40 he flipped the switch, and watched closely as the Reiki manipulator began slowly sucking up the wisps of vortex energy and sending it streaming out in a tight beam through wooden walls and the Titanic's steel bulkheads towards the distant iceberg, dead ahead on the TARDIS's sensitive scope. He waited patiently for about fifteen minutes, making sure all was well, then locked the TARDIS up and made his way to the forward deck to watch, staring out over the calm black sea.

^..^

It took Twelve most of the morning following Rose's attempted suicide, but he finally discovered that the young artist Jack Dawson hadn't made it aboard the Titanic in this universe — he'd lost that final hand of poker that had won him the tickets in the other world. He briefly considered skipping back for him, but decided in the end not to let himself be sidetracked in this most crucial of missions; the TARDIS, although more reliable than at times in the past, still had her moments._ At least this way his chances of a long life are better — and they might still manage to meet in America like they should._

He found himself in the same group with Rose and her party on several occasions over the next few days, but made no move to speak with her privately. Nonetheless, he caught her looking at him speculatively a few times, and watched with interest as a small glint of determination grew slowly behind her eyes, and the space she unconsciously left between herself and her fiancé widened a millimeter at a time. _Better watch out, Hockley. If she's still beside you when you reach New York, she'll be over the horizon the moment her feet touch dry land. For that matter, you'd better make sure you get in the same lifeboat._

Instead, Twelve turned his attention to the ship's builder, Thomas Andrews, and had several enjoyable conversations with the man, discussing all manner of engineering problems and "modern" marvels. Andrews was keen to get a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge after their voyage; although twenty years old already, it was still at the forefront of engineering technology. Thus the Doctor went along on the tour Andrews gave Rose and a few others, and overheard her asking about the number of lifeboats. She'd done the math, and come up short, of course. Andrews reassured her of the ship's safety, but she still looked unconvinced. Twelve grabbed the opportunity a few minutes later as she passed directly by him going through a door to whisper "Remember the lifeboats!" in her ear. She glanced sharply at him, but he had already turned away. She walked on, quietly thoughtful.

Twelve didn't join the others the final day, as his preparations were to take even longer than Nine's had. Contrary to what he'd told his past self, he was going to send two streams to Ten's TARDIS: first a small wave of vortex energy to supplement Nine's, and then the repelling broad beam of Z-neutrinos after the first half hour, to push the trapped time ship into the correct universe. He discovered the retrofitted Reiki manipulator mostly intact in a storage room, just where he remembered tossing it, and quickly reassembled and tested the contraption, setting it up underneath the raised platform. (The TARDIS's current configuration, with the Time Rotor and control panels raised several feet off the floor with a spiral staircase, certainly made this kind of work easier to do.) Then, diving back in to that and other compartments, he assembled a makeshift Z-front generator, and installed it in the control room alongside the other. Finally, he hooked up the vacuum flask of Z-neutrinos he'd collected in the Medusa Cascade on his way back from meeting Nine, leftovers from the Dalek Crucible's destruction all those many (subjective) years before.

Finally all was in readiness, and he left briefly to eat a last late supper in the sumptuous first class dining saloon. He sat alone this time, staring surreptitiously around at his fellow travelers, wondering who would still be alive in four hours. Most of those present would be, he knew; but most of those inhabiting the decks below them would not. After striving to keep the knowledge of impending doom at bay for the past four days, the returning realization came as a shock to his system, and he rose abruptly from his solitary repast to return to the comforts of familiar surroundings. The TARDIS hummed softly in his mind, wordlessly soothing the forever-lonely Last of the Time Lords, and he slowly relaxed, at last turning a sad smile on the Time Rotor. _*Thank you, chérie.*_ He sighed heavily. _*It will all be over soon.*_

He watched the time tick slowly away on the old grandfather clock in the corner, and threw the switch on the vortex device at precisely 22:40. Watching the monitor closely, he waited for any change in the readings from the TARDIS trapped in the iceberg a few miles away and closing, but nothing happened as time ticked slowly away.

Puzzled, he looked up at the Time Rotor, and asked the one question he'd never thought to ask before. _*How did you know what to do?*_

No reply.

_*Chérie?*_

_*You told/will tell me.*_

He was absolutely rocked. The sentient TARDIS had slipped into Gallifreyan, as she often did, using the verb tense that meant _past_ action for the speaker, but _future_ action for the listener.

And at last he understood.

"Well," he sighed aloud. "At least I won't have to burn up a star, this time."


	11. Rose: Transformation

**Rose: Transformation**

Rose huddled on the floor, a heap of abject terror and misery. She couldn't imagine what to do. All these years, learning about the TARDIS, learning about the Time Lords from her Doctor, becoming an adequate copilot, all the glorious and terrifying adventures they'd had over the decades; _NONE_ of it had prepared her to face this ultimate catastrophe all alone.

She sat on the floor beside the Doctor's cold, lifeless body, the continuing tolling of the cloister bell reverberating through her very bones, while she stared around at the dim walls of the beloved time ship, her home for the past few decades and the only place ever she wanted to be. Tears streamed continuously down her cheeks as she clutched her bondmate's torso close to her chest.

And then...

The cloister bell seemed to hesitate, the next dong coming just a tiny semi-second later, and a single decibel softer. Then again... and again... it was definitely fading.

Something else was happening, too: the tiniest, softest, white-gold wisps of light were creeping up the seams of the walls, and up the coral pillars, up from the floorboards. For several endless, breathless minutes, she watched it slowly seep skyward – but it came nowhere close to the central pillar with the Time Rotor and the control panels. Abruptly she realized the cloister bell had stopped completely, and with the dying echoes of the final note, heavy silence reigned supreme.

And there it stopped. The incoming vortex energy – what else could it be? - clung to the walls and ceiling, dancing miniscule minuets upon each surface, but advanced no further. She listened as hard as she could to the newly-discovered psychic "frequency" that the TARDIS had been crying on, but heard only continuing silence; the time ship was still moribund.

"What do I do? Mathurin... Doctor, what do I do?" Of course, there was no reply. She looked down on his beloved, peaceful face again, caressing his cheek, then laying her hand on his chest, hoping to feel a heartbeat – from either side.

Instead, she felt a point of startling heat seeping through his shirt from a hard lump on his skin. She undid the buttons one-handed, fumbling, and discovered the heat was coming from her old locket, which had never left his neck in all their decades together. Staring nonplussed at the tiny metal heart, she realized a single bit of the white vortex energy had moved across his body to settle on and in the gold.

Memory prickled. "The answer's right under your nose." A sudden gasp. "Not my nose, yours!"

Gingerly, tenderly, she moved the Doctor's head from her lap and lowered it gently to the floor, then undid the clasp of the locket and stood slowly with it in her hand, staring down at its tiny brilliance. "But what do I do? What do I do?"

"Rose?"

It took a beat, but then she nearly jumped out of her skin at the realization she really had heard her name with her physical ears. She whipped around –

– and came face-to-face with a complete stranger.

Curly black hair framed deep, intensely blue eyes staring at her as if she were the most precious treasure in the universe. The man who'd appeared out of nowhere ignored the fantastical surroundings, his eyes only on hers.

"Who are you?" she breathed.

The stranger blinked, then small smile crept across his lips, both ironic and wistful. "The Ghost of Doctors Yet to Come." His head tilted towards the figure on the floor. "I'm him, Rose. A future him. But I'm not a ghost. I'm a hologram. I'm really here, Rose, in my TARDIS, a short distance away, sending you this message."

Rose suddenly sobbed, relief warring with terror. They weren't out of this yet. "Tell me what to do!" she cried.

The tiny golden flash as she'd raised both hands to her face caught his eye, and he nodded at the charm. "You already know, love. You already know."

She stared down, turning that hand over to watch the pendant swing in the air an inch below it. Miniscule threadlets of the vortex energy were sneaking up the chain and onto her hand, attracting the old familiar glow from deep within her own skin.

Shutting her eyes tight against a sudden threatening flood of tears, she bit her lips, and nodded. She couldn't speak past the rock in her throat.

In those few seconds, a faint sound had begun floating through the air – the tinkling of her childhood music box had returned. The image of the Twelfth Doctor tilted his head to listen to it, his wistful, memory-laden smile deepening. "It will, you know."

"What?" Bewildered, not following his thoughts, her eyes blinked open.

Quoting his mother's song, which he'd sung to her under the great-grandfather corin tree on New Gallifrey (and occasionally since in private moments), he spoke softly but emphatically. "Your name _will_ echo through my soul, beyond _all_ end."

He reached out with one hand to cup her cheek – and completely unexpectedly, she felt a tingle there, so when he leaned slowly over, intent obvious, she closed her eyes and returned the ghostly kiss. The tingle on her cheek and lips faded, and she knew before she opened her eyes again that he was gone.

The control room was empty but for her and the Tenth Doctor's body on the floor.

Rose took a deep, shuddering breath, then knelt once more by her beloved's side, leaning over to deliver a last, lingering kiss on his cold lips, then whispering "_N__'ha tolaren mathurin"_ one last time.

Then she stood again, casting a final look around the room, and walked slowly over to the nearest coral pillar, placing both hands flat upon the surface and watching the new, clean vortex energy flow onto – and into – her hands, then her arms. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until every white-gold drop in the entire room ran swiftly, defying gravity and fluid mechanics alike, up and around the walls and ceiling and down the pillar to meet its new vessel.

Her eyes were closed now, but she no longer needed them. Slowly, carefully, she reached out with all her senses, then with all of herself, touching and absorbing everything around her. She found her beloved's icy form and cradled it gently, breathing warmth and life and unearthly energy from far beyond the stars back into it.

Then she spread farther, and farther, feeling and absorbing structure, and energy, and space itself, healing and merging with all she found. She came to a dark, sick-feeling space, and filled it up as well with the brilliant light inside her, creating a new hotly-beating heart for herself. Then, strengthened and fortified, she fetched up suddenly against a frozen, diamond-hard barrier completely surrounding her, and she _pushed_ against it until it shattered. She paused, feeling twin compulsions, a _push_ from one side and a _pull_ from the other, and she turned towards the latter, briefly touching its source to stop the flow, and then streaking away, away, and away.

At long, long last, she had found the blessed, warm, endless sea of her dreams. She spread her wings, and began to soar, following the ethereal melodies of distant galaxies down the softly scented, starlit currents.


	12. Nine - Twelve: Escape

**Nine/Twelve: Escape**

Both the Ninth and Twelfth Doctors stood, breathlessly bouncing on their toes, upon the open forward deck of their respective version of the doomed Titanic, peering ahead into the inky darkness. Just as always promised, the sea was an absolute flat dead calm; the winds utterly still; the stars far above doing little to light the scene without the help of the absent moon. They stretched their hearing out, as well, listening in as best they could to the chatter of the distant lookouts up in the crow's nest, as well as that drifting down from the bridge.

At 11:40 pm all hell broke loose.

"_Iceberg, right ahead!"_ The lookout shouted the warning into the phone to the bridge in panic. The First Officer began issuing the frantic commands to turn the ship, too late, too late...

Swimming up out of the darkness directly in front of the ship, the iceberg loomed its frozen menace, its hundred-fifty-foot-high peak overtopping the bridge itself and nearly the funnels. Closer and closer...

… when, less than a hundred feet away, the top third of the berg suddenly exploded, shards of ice flying in all directions. Those who happened to be looking would later swear they saw a dark, rectangular shape launch straight up into the air like a rocket, though no means of propulsion nor indeed any fire trail was seen. A few hundred feet up, it simply vanished from view.

Every man gasped, and every Time Lord breathed a huge sigh of relief, their eyes then drifting downward again to the ice castle...

… which was no longer there...

_BUT ANOTHER SHIP WAS._

Every individual simply froze, speech and thoughts both gone, as a precise mirror image of their own vessel drove directly towards them. They had both managed to swerve slightly to begin avoiding the berg, so it seemed they might almost pass each other unscathed - No such luck. The two ships collided at their shoulders, slamming into each other with impacts that shook each one from stem to stern, then – still propelled by their engines – continued to plow into each other as they scraped past, punching matching holes in each hull down through five successive watertight compartments.

The two Doctors stared directly into each other's eyes from their separate decks, coming less than twenty feet apart. Suddenly, Twelve's face contorted with outrage. _"You couldn't remember THIS?" _he yelled. Nine watched as his future self's head jerked back, then his face twisted further into sheer, insane fury. _"You son of a BITCH!"_ Realizing what had just happened, Nine plastered a huge, toothy, (slightly malicious) grin on his face and tossed his counterpart a jaunty salute –

– and at that moment, the two ships faded from each other's view, morphing back into the iceberg they'd just tried to avoid. The walls between the two worlds were sealed once again.

(Sailors and officers on both ships turned to each other, utterly dumbfounded. "Did you see that?" some cried. Suddenly, the First Officer laughed. "Of course not! It was just our own reflection off the iceberg! Why, I even saw myself!" The others let themselves be reassured... of course, that MUST have been it... and returned to their previous panic.)

Nine spun on his heel and headed to the small, unobtrusive door he knew led almost directly down into the hold where the TARDIS was waiting. Just before he reached it, it opened, admitting Jack and Rose to the deck, looking slightly disheveled. "What's going on, Doctor?" Jack queried.

"We hit an iceberg. Listen, the ship's going to sink. Get to the lifeboats – don't wait!"

"WHAT?"

The Doctor didn't pause, but continued on his way through the door. The two new lovers stared at each other, then Rose shook her head. "I must warn Mother and Cal." And they turned towards the first class staterooms.

Nine made it all the way to the TARDIS door and put his key into the lock before his conscience got the best of him. He hung his head, sighing heavily – and then turned back, going to help the crew try to convince as many people as possible to get into the lifeboats before it was too late.

^..^

Twelve found he was suddenly yelling in rage at an iceberg towering over the deck (though not as tall as it had been). Screwing his eyes tightly shut for a moment, he managed to tamp his fury down, then channel it into something more productive. He ran to the bridge, helping Mr Andrews determine the extent of the damage, then chivvied the hapless Captain into giving the order to abandon ship. Feeling no compunction towards shifting the balance of lives lost in _this_ world, he'd previously set up a signal for the TARDIS to send out at the right time that grabbed the attention of the nearby USS California with no uncertainty, leading them straight to the sinking Titanic in time to save a few more souls (although the final tally was still more people dead than alive).

His next destination was the barriers between the class decks, which he smashed through with no regard for White Star Line property, leading several groups of desperate steerage passengers up through the interior maze to topside, where they at least had a chance.

He was running along the promenade on deck C when he happened to glance to his right at the lifeboat just being lowered from above – and saw her. Rose Dewitt Bukator was seated in the third row with her mother, staring upwards at the face of her fiancé on the boat deck above. The Doctor never hesitated. _"ROSE!"_ As her head swiveled sharply around, he ran to the railing and simply stabbed out his hand to her, staring deep into her startled eyes, not saying another word.

It took precisely two-thirds of a second for his words on the first night to flash through her mind. _"You'll know the moment when you see it. And you'll grab onto it with both hands, and slip away like mist, and follow your dreams." _She knew the moment, all right: this was it. Without a moment's hesitation she launched herself off her seat and onto the side of the ship, grabbing his hand and holding on for dear life. He helped her over the railing, ignoring both her mother's screams and her fiancé's shouts from above. Then, still holding on with the one hand, he turned, wrapped his other hand around her waist, and began running forward with her towards the TARDIS's hiding place.

They were just passing the bottom of the grand staircase when a shot rang out, chipping a bit of wood paneling just past the Doctor's ear. The shout from the landing told them it was Cal. They dove through the door before them into a long hallway, then the Doctor swerved sideways, bursting through a doorway into one of the cabins. He moved instantly to stand along the wall beside the door, moving Rose behind him with one hand.

The pistol preceded an incautious Hockley into the room; the Doctor grabbed it and used a quick jujitsu move to throw the man into the wall opposite, then casually pocketed the gun. Cal gaped at him, then hissed furiously, "What the devil are you doing with _my_ fiancée?"

Just about to go out the door with her, Twelve paused and looked back at the man, pouring all his not inconsiderable contempt into a single glance. "That was your first mistake with her, Hockley, and your last: thinking she's your _property_. She never was."

Rose, gazing at the Doctor with surprised appreciation, never even glanced at her former fiancé, but simply followed Twelve out the door, hand in hand.

^..^

They made it to the TARDIS just in time: water was just tickling the bottom corner of the wooden box. Twelve pulled Rose inside and latched the door securely behind them, but didn't give her time to do the traditional "bigger on the inside" dance, leaving her to gape from just inside the door while he dashed up the spiral stairs and spun them quickly into nearby space, just outside the Earth's atmosphere.

_Then_ he leaned casually against the railing to grin down at her.

Of course, she didn't believe a word he said – not until he opened the door again to let her stare openmouthed down at the planet far below.

"I'm flying!" she breathed ecstatically. "I'm really flying!"

He didn't bother to correct her technical error.

Finally she looked at him again, belief beginning to show around the edges of her eyes. "Space.. _and_ time?"

He nodded, then grinned down at her skirt brushing the TARDIS's deck plates. "As much as I adore women in long dresses – and believe me, I truly do – it's _completely_ unsuitable attire for space travel. Let alone some of the places and times we'll be going to." Closing the door, he took her by the shoulders and gently turned her around, pointing up past the center console. "Now, if you go up those stairs and through that doorway, down the hall, up the next stairs and then left, you'll come to an enormous wardrobe. Pick out anything you like – absolutely anything. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I believe there's an entire section with your name on it."


	13. Into The Future

**Into the Future: Once, Twice, Thrice**

Nine finished the jump off the now-sinking Titanic and back to dry land, checking when he'd arrived and grinning: the Southampton docks, just five minutes after he'd left. The ship was still berthed a few hundred yards away, preparing for her maiden departure in the morning.

He sat down on the jump seat and composed himself, flashing back to the Twelfth Doctor's final words after their conference in this spot five minutes and five days before. _"Doctor... one more thing. I need you to do one last thing for me, after this is over. I need you to forget this ever happened. Take all the memories and lock them away under an autogenous psi-lock, so I'll remember them at the right time to set this thing in motion."_

_Nine had nodded. "And the trigger?"_

_Twelve had smiled, a little wistfully. "A wedding reception, with the band playing Glenn Miller's In the Mood."_

_Then his look sharpened; he couldn't seem to resist some parting words. "And Doctor... Your life is about to change, dramatically. Pay attention." He paused for emphasis. "And go back for her."_

Nine shook himself out of his reverie, wondering again at that parting shot and then dismissing it. Remembering the scene (was it really only two hours ago?) as he'd stared across the gap at his future self, seeing him jerk _as the last memory hit him_, he grinned again, and carefully locked away just the single memory of the mirror Titanics colliding, to be triggered by the event itself.

_Then_ he gathered up the rest of the incident, from just before he'd heard the future TARDIS land outside to this very moment, and locked them away as directed...

….Nine opened his eyes on the control room, shaking his head to clear it. What had he been thinking about? _Oh, yes... Daniels family: sorted. Thank the stars I didn't actually have to get on board the Titanic; I probably would have ended up clinging to an iceberg! Now, then, back to 2005._ He was certain he'd caught a whiff of the Nestene Consciousness there, hanging around that one department store. What was its name? Oh, yes, Henrik's.

He stood and stretched, and took off for the future, and an unexpected encounter with a young shop girl named Rose Tyler.

^..^

Twelve leaned against the jump seat, awash in memories. His previous self had never been able to explain that odd, unexpected impulse that made him return to give Rose Tyler another shot at traveling with him after she'd rejected him the first time. Now he knew why: some stray wisp of his own advice had seeped out of the psi-lock, just as intended.

He grimaced, remembering the easy, casual way he'd lied to the Ninth Doctor a few days before, waving away the very real – and very true – danger that depleting the vortex pool had represented; setting up the very circumstances that had ultimately led to this very spot.

_Cause and Effect have left the building along with Elvis: that is for sure and for certain. How often have I played this same game, all through my thousand-plus years of existence, manipulating people into doing what I wanted, telling myself it was for the greater good? And now comes the final, supreme tragedy: when I played it on myself. And at what cost? Oh, my love, at what cost?_

The TARDIS was listening to his thoughts, as always, and she broke in on them. _*Was it worth it?*_

That caught him up short. He opened his eyes again, gazing at the softly-glowing Time Rotor, and a slow smile lit up his face. _*Worth every tear, __chérie_._ Every... single... tear.*_

A moment later, another Rose walked through the door, dressed in dungarees and a man's shirt – too large for her, to tell the truth, but it looked good; she'd dressed it up with a long, flowing scarf. "You weren't kidding – there really WAS a section with my name on it!"

Twelve turned his smile on her. "I traveled with another woman named Rose, once."

She stopped short, asking perspicaciously, "And will that be a problem?"

He took a breath, pleasantly startled at her intelligence once again. "No," he replied with complete honesty. "No, it won't be a problem."

Then he grinned, instantly making up his mind. "Now, then, for our first destination: how would you like to visit a completely different planet?"

"A different _planet?_" She was game, of course – and utterly thrilled at the prospect.

"It's not my home planet, you understand, but I do happen to have family there. It's called Pacifica."

And off they went, into the bright, shining future.

^..^

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the Tenth Doctor swam up from the deepest depths of unconsciousness and into the bright light of the TARDIS's control room. He was lying on his back on the floor – and somehow he knew he'd been out for quite a very long time. Days, perhaps. Hours, definitely.

"Rose?" he called out, his voice croaking.

No answer.

Wait, what? His voice sounded different, even to himself. VERY different.

He raised his hands towards his throat – and then froze, staring at them. Those were NOT his usual hands.

"Oh, my stars!" he whispered – distracting himself again for a moment with the sound of his new voice. Only for a moment, though, as it became further evidence of his status.

"I've regenerated. Rose! I've regenerated! All the way! Rose?" He waited a moment, but there was still no answer.

Distracted again, he sat up quickly, then bounded to unsteady feet, doing a quick inventory. "Arms! Hands! Ooh, lots of fingers!" He ran those hands over his face. "Ears, yes! Eyes, two! Nose – eh, I've had worse. Chin, blimey!" It was quite a chin. "Hair... oh, no! I'm a girl!" His hair was definitely on the long side. Then, mentally switching focus to another part of his anatomy further south, he relaxed. "No, not a girl." He pulled a strand of that long hair in front of his eyes, twisting his face and going cross-eyed to focus on it. "And I'm still not ginger! DRAT!"

Inventory complete, he focused again on his surroundings. "_Rose!_ Blast it! What happened, what happened?" The last thing he remembered was reaching into the sickly vortex pool. "Rose?"

Finally, finally, her mental voice came along their telepathic link. _*I'm here.*_

He blinked. "Where are you? Rose, I want to show you. I regenerated!"

Another long pause. _*I'm know.*_

Now this was getting irritating. He spun around, expecting to see her pop out somewhere. Still no sign.

Then at last it hit him. It was unmistakably her mental voice, but _it was coming on the TARDIS's wavelength._

Slowly, afraid to see, he spun back around, and looked sidelong at the tall glass column of the Time Rotor, which for over nine hundred years had pumped him and his companions across time and space with rhythmic, aqua-blue flashes...

… was now glowing a mesmerizing, rosy pink.

"Rose?" he whispered fearfully.

_*I'm here, love.*_ A pause, as she seemed to be remembering the words, remembering what they were for, digging them up from deep,deep memory. _*You were wrong. It was me. I had to return the vortex energy I'd been using, ever since Bad Wolf, ever since I was twinned. And in doing so... my consciousness joined the TARDIS. I'm part of the ship now. I AM the ship. I healed myself, and I healed you.*_

"No..." But of course, it was far, far, far too late.

_*Mathurin... my love.*_ Her voice caressed his mind, soothing him as the time ship had done for a millenium. Then it took on an added scent of lilac memory, echoing the Bad Wolf's words from so long before. _*I want you safe, my Doctor. Safe, and whole, and happy, forever.*_

"But I'll never be whole without you," he protested, oozing raw anguish.

_*But you'll never be without me,*_ she replied, her words ringing with truth. _*I promised you forever, my love, and we will have it. But everything changes. Even you. And even forever.*_

The brand-spanking-new Eleventh Doctor stood by the console, utterly torn between the past and the future. He raised one regenerated hand and placed it gently on the glass containing the rosy-pink Time Rotor. "I will never love _anyone_... the way I loved you. You know that, don't you?"

She replied as she always had, with a wave of love flooding his mind – even as she subtly made him face what he'd said: loved. Already in the past tense. A new man was ready to walk away, into the future. The Doctor was dead; long live the Doctor.

Then, Rose-like, she suddenly changed the subject. _*First thing I'm going to do is redecorate. I'm utterly sick of this look – I've been wearing it for over two hundred years!*_

He rolled his eyes, grinning, willing to play along. "Oh, how typically female. Let a new woman move in, and the first thing she does is rearrange the furniture!"

_*Well, you need to change things around once in a while, Doctor! You're far too much of a stick-in-the-mud!*_ Her mental voice was chock-full of peppermint mirth.

Then, suddenly: _*Uh, Doctor? I think you'd better have a look at the sensors.*_

"Why?" He raced around to the monitor.

_*I think I need some practice steering this box.*_

"Aaaaagh! We're _crashing!"_ He let out a wild whoop of sheer, unadulterated joy. _"GERONIMOOOO!"_ And an echo of Rose's pealing laughter chased his war cry around the ceiling.

And so they fell to Earth, in love and in laughter, and into the future; falling towards a tiny little house in a tiny little village, with a large garden, and a crack in a wall, and a very scared, very brave little girl.

**INVICTUS  
_… to him unconquered ..._**


	14. PostScript

**PostScript**

_**Author's Note: **__a major inspiration for this story (especially the prologue) was Sting's song A Thousand Years. I didn't try to work it into the story itself, but I include the lyrics here for your pleasure. Do try to find a copy of the song if you've never heard it; it's even more lovely - and haunting - sung than written, and absolutely perfect for Ten and Rose, in whatever story they find themselves running through.  
_

_Regards,  
Lilac Reverie_

**A Thousand Years  
**by Kipper and Sting

A thousand years, a thousand more,  
A thousand times a million doors to eternity  
I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times  
An endless turning stairway climbs  
To a tower of souls  
If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,  
The towers rise to numberless floors in space  
I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,  
A million names but only one truth to face

A million roads, a million fears  
A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty  
I could speak a million lies, a million songs,  
A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time  
But if there was a single truth, a single light  
A single thought, a singular touch of grace  
Then following this single point , this single flame,  
The single haunted memory of your face

I still love you  
I still want you  
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves  
Like galaxies in my head

I may be numberless, I may be innocent  
I may know many things, I may be ignorant  
Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands  
Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands  
I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times  
Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes  
Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief  
I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief

I still love you  
I still want you  
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves  
Like galaxies in my head  
On and on the mysteries unwind themselves  
Eternities still unsaid  
'Til you love me


End file.
